


Calculated Loss

by cerebrobullet



Series: Calculation [2]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen, Yoglabs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3755032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerebrobullet/pseuds/cerebrobullet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Lalnable has gotten out of control, Xephos turns to the only solution he knows: destruction of the clone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calculated Loss

The room was, of course, familiar. Long and tall, endless almost, one wall lined with rows and rows of glass and metal cells, filled with a number of different clones. The other long wall of the hallway held platforms for controls, for observations, for tunnels to other rooms and other experiments. Everything in this place was an experiment, including, Lalnable was quite aware, himself. And he was now a failed experiment. He knew where failed experiments went.

The crane swung his cage over the balcony edge, dangling it in the air, waiting for the ceiling clamp to take it. The scientist leaned against the glass, his eyes falling to the far end of the hallway. A pool of lava, metal mouth agape and waiting for him, bubbled in the floor. Above it hung another cell, just like his own, with a clone inside, just like himself. Slowly, the prison lowered down. He thought he could hear the scream, but knew it was unlikely from this far away. Despite that fact, he shivered, pushing back from the glass. The cage trembled a bit as the clamp caught his hook. Lalnable sucked in his breath, looking up at the metal ceiling. If he’d had his armor still, he could just-

“No way to escape this one,” a voice called from behind him. The voice was familiar to him, more familiar than the speaker realized. Lalnable stayed where he stood silently and kept his gaze on the far wall of cages. The speaker continued. “Oh come on, it’s not like you didn’t see this coming, once you discovered the testing room, killed all of the testificate scientists on the project-”

The clones’s shoulders stiffened. “Oh no, I absolutely expected this,” he replied. “I’m not sure why that should make facing my immanent, painful death any easier, Xephos.”

“It only hurts for a little bit. Very quick, and then it’s over.”

“I suppose you know that from testing it yourself?”

“… Aren’t you at least going to turn around and look at me while we speak?”

Lalnable did as requested, spinning around to meet a painfully familiar gaze. Finger lifted, he opened his mouth to retort, but found his pithy response suddenly lost to him as the cage jerked into motion. Instead, his eyes shot up to the ceiling again, arms reaching out to brace himself. He wanted to close his eyes, to try and lessen the pit of fear in his stomach, to slow his heart from beating out of his chest, but he wouldn’t give Xephos the satisfaction of seeing that. As Lalnable looked ahead again, he saw the head scientist was now walking slowly with the cage, keeping pace along the upper balcony.

“You know I really am sorry it came to this,” Xephos said. “I really thought things had been going well. But I suppose you are you, no matter how I try to fix you.” The words were followed with a sigh and a shake of the head, Xephos tapping his chin as if facing down a mundane math problem.

There were a lot of responses Lalnable could issue, but all that squeaked out was cracked “Fix me?!”, the words getting caught in his throat. “FIX me?!” he cried out the words again, louder, stronger. As he spoke he closed the gap between them, stomped his way across the metal floor to slam two fists into the glass, throwing his furious emotions into the motion with great emphasis. “Well if I’m fucking broken it’s your fault!”

Xephos continued his slow walk. “No no no, this happens all the time. Something wrong with the copies, you see, they go bad sometimes. I’m sure it’s something in the procedure we do. I was hoping to eventually put you on the task of fixing it, but, well…” He ended with a shrug, looking over to the cell.

Lalnable’s brow was furrowed, eyes wide. Fists, clenched white as they pressed against the glass, loosened slowly. “… I’ve happened before?”

Xephos laughed. “Of course you have! You saw all the clones of you we make. Well, not you, but the original Lalna. One of our best clones for tests, surprisingly resilient.”

Lalnable shook his head. “No, I mean… ones that don’t end up as test subjects, that you let think are… are-”

“The real you? The real Lalna? Only two, neither as successful as you, both very short lived. Though we have had others that have gone, ah,” Xephos circulated his hands in the air a few times, trying to unearth the term from his mind, “… murderous? A few accidents with testificate doctors. Nothing too serious, before your outburst.”

“Did you kill the others like this, too?” Lalnable leaned in closer, his breath leaving a fog on the glass. Hands, uncurled, laid gently against the window, smudging it with sweat.

“Disposed of the failed experiments, yes.” Xephos replied, coming to a halt at the end of the balcony.

The clone suddenly became aware of his surroundings again, looking down the glass window to the boiling lava below. He wanted to go out defiantly, to stand in the face of Xephos’s betrayal and disinterest and to slip into the lava in silence, but the heat below seeped into his cell, and penetrated his thoughts. Perspiration on his forehead, the gentle wave of heated air before his eyes. Cold glass turning warm, cold metal under his feet turning hot. He pulled away from every surface, drawing into himself. Across from him, on the balcony, Xephos still stood, eyes half hooded, hands clasped behind his back. Silent again, watching, like it was just another experiment. Lalnable wanted to drag him in with him, wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but all he could do as the heat rose was the strength to keep his cries of fear inside.

“Sorry it came to this, friend. You were very promising.” Xephos said, offering another shrug. “Too curious for your own good, as usual.”

The head scientist nodded to someone on the ground, and, slowly, the cell began to descend.

Lalnable’s wide eyes narrowed slowly, hand wringing around his own wrist as the figure of his old friend began to rise out of view. “You know it’s going to happen again. In another hundred clones, in another thousand, I’ll do it again. I won’t stop until this is over.” The grasping fingers began to tremble as the heat rose higher. He could hear the bubbling lava now, the pop and fiz as it leaped out of its cauldron from him. His head remained turned upwards, eyes focused and steady.

Xephos blinked a few times, tilting his head. “Do what again? Go crazy?”

There were a lot of answers to that question that raced through Lalnable’s mind, many versions including expletives. But there was one he hoped might be his last blow, a punch to the gut of the despicable person he’d once called his friend. So he clenched his hands tighter to stop their trembling, and lifted his eyes to meet the questioning gaze, and spoke, calmly: “I’ll remember again.”

“… What do you mean?” Xephos questioned him quickly. “What do you mean remember? What do- What do you remember?”

As Xephos’s face rose out of view, Lalnable could see two fists grip on to the metal railing.

“Who you are, what…” Xephos continued, the voice growing strained, frantic. “Answer me! What do your remember! L- Lalna? LALNA? LALNA ANSWER ME!”

Lalnable could hear only his heartbeat in his ears. The last of his courage had been used up, and he stood, shaking, in the center of his cell. Sweat dripped down his forehead in the heat, wetted every article of clothing on him. With heavy breaths and trembling hands he stood straight in the center of his cell, wanting all at once to come to peace with this end, to relish in his final blow, but to also fall to his knees and beg his enemy for mercy. A quicker death, a kinder death, for someone who’d once been a friend. He could remember pieces from the beginning, remnants the master clone had given to him, of building Yoglabs with Xephos and Honeydew, of fighting and and learning together, of testing the boundaries of bodies and morals. The face of a friend he’d trusted once, the memories of a body being drugged, contained, locked away to be cloned and cloned and cloned as needed. His body, his original’s body. What Lalnable remembered was mostly fragments and feelings, but what Lalnable remembered clearest was what Xephos had done to him. In his mind he could envision the place again, the glass container, the wires and tubes, the cloning machine. Water on ground and ceiling, glass walkways and blurry figures. Containment, containment and cages and it was always, always, where he found himself again. Always, Xephos place him behind the glass, and gazed at him with those half lidded blue eyes. Lalnable remembered.

The cage trembled, and Lalnable stumbled, hands reaching out into the air to balance himself, too afraid to touch the metal. Heat was all around him, heat was burying him, but that was still all there was. His prison stood still, and he held his breath and waited. As his feet continued to not melt and lava continued to not rise out of the floor, he became aware of noise outside his container. Screaming, actually. Heartbeat still fast, but focus returning to him, he tried to listen to the cries.

“I said pull that fucking cage out of the damn lava or I’ll push you in it yourself! Don’t you DARE lower it another fucking inch!” The cracking voice of Xephos echoed through the expansive hallway.

A figure rushed towards the container’s front window, leaning over the guard rail around the lava to peer in at Lalnable. Xephos’s eyes were wide, his chest heaving. He seemed almost read to jump the fence and kick in the window, his tense body leaning heavily against the boundary. “Lalna? Lalna can you hear me?”

Part of Lalnable told himself this was his ticket, his chance to escape. Lie to Xephos, become the real Lalna for him. Lie like he lied to you. His mind begged for it, to be reasonable and to save himself and honestly who really cares about who the real Lalna was and what happened to him when there’s about to be lava boiling you alive, but-… He closed his eyes and shook his head, speaking quietly. “I’m not your Lalna.”

“No! You said you remembered, you remember me, right? You remember us, working together? Making the labs? Honeydew? The factory?”

“… Pieces. What does it even matter?”

The scientist said nothing for a time, just settled his eyes on the clone, letting his breathing slow down. The window had grown foggy from condensation, Lalnable’s hand and fist prints still visible on the glass.

Xephos opened his mouth to speak, then looked away, pushing off the railing. “Lift the cage back up, set it ah… in… oh hell if I know, just put it somewhere safe I’ll.. I’ll find somewhere for it.” The blue eyes followed the action of the workers, but seemed to be staring much further away. Somewhere not in that hallway, perhaps not even that time. The cage rattled once more then began to lift away from the lava, its red glow seeping slowly from the cage.

“You’re an anomaly,” Xephos finally spoke, eyes still caught elsewhere. “No clone has remembered where he came from before. You need to be…. studied.”

As Xephos’s form retreated from view below him, Lalnable close his eyes and sank, slowly, to the floor of his cell. His hands covered his face as he found himself caught so strangely between despair and relief. His death was falling away beneath him, but he could imagine no better outcome ahead of him, not if he were to be “studied.” But maybe….. maybe there was hope. Maybe, he thought as he looked at the small figure now far below him, maybe this was his key to his freedom and revenge. He thought about the spaceman and his averted gaze, about this sudden change of heart. Perhaps the man was weaker than he acted. Destroying memoryless clone husks that didn’t know who you were was easy to Xephos. Destroying a memoryless clone husk you’d trained and worked with for months was also, apparently, a breeze for the scientist. But to stare down the face of a friend, who knew who you should be, who’d trusted and loved you, and watch that clone burn alive… A little to much for the head scientist to stomach, it seemed.

The thought made Lalnable chuckle, and then laugh, and then laugh until his voice echoed through the hall. Lalnable did not harbor any such feelings for Xephos now, no. Xephos was going to burn.


End file.
